My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, like, seven or eight years ago I picked up this book, Vellum: The Book of All Hours. This was during the infancy of ebooks, back before iBooks, before Kindle, back when Palm was the platform for ebooks. I can’t imagine a worse device for reading books, but they developed a Mac app, and an online ebooks store, and for a very little while, Palm was “it” for digital reading.

Anyway, yes, I bought this book, Vellum, I read, maybe, fifty pages, and I put it down. Then a few years later I bought it in Kindle format and I don’t know if I ever even opened it. Now, today, I’m into Vellum again, and this time, I’m going to finish it or die trying, which feels kind of possible. I think it’s called The Book of All Hours, because it takes all the hours of your life to get through it. I’ve been reading since I nabbed from iBooks three days ago and it feels like three years. I feel like it’s never going to stop, and the constant shifts in time, in perspective, in reality, they don’t help you feel like your moving forward or even backward, or even fucking sideways. It’s like reading words written on the tread of a treadmill. You just keep going ’round and ’round, world without end, Amen.

I’m going to finish, then I’ll write a full review, as opposed to this pre-review rant.

Today was kind of ho-hum… My current trach tube is really bothering me, it’s hard to find focus when you’re not breathing free and easy.

For now, I’m tired.

So, a quick auto-update later and we’re running WordPress 4.2. It’s nothing drastic, but more a robust set of refinements, mostly for the sharing of content from the web and Twitter directly to your blog posts.

Generally, I’m not big on sharing links, and articles, pictures of adorable kitties with traches, Facebook has never been my bag. I started the blog, particularly this iteration, with the idea of mainly posting original content. I’m doing a really shit job of it, but original content is the idea… I’ve gotten into this pattern of vowing to do better, then failing. Vow fail vow fail vow fail. It’s frustrating. I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated in so many ways.

Anyway, let’s make one potentially final grand vow… I’m going to post every single day until June 1, but if I fail, I delete the blog. I’m not vowing quality, mind you, just quantity. I’ve said it before, I think that if you’re a writer, and you’re confidant that you do know the craft, quality can be a natural progression of quantity. At any rate, I’ve never backed-up the blog, and I won’t back-up. It’ll just be… gone.

After June 1, if we get there, I’ll re-evaluate the situation.

She’s gone, save for in my dreams. She’s with me in my dreams. Always in my dreams. Only in my dreams.

It’s not the same, just the whisper of her voice, her laugh. It’s just the ghost of her kiss, her touch, as if felt through a thin layer of gauze. I gently brush the tips of my fingers across her lips. If I could just let go, just fall completely into my mind, I could feel the softness of her, her tongue caressing my fingertips. She lays her hand on my chest, feels that my heart beats fast and strong and only for her. My heart is pounding as she lays next to me, in that non-place, that place that isn’t a place, where your mind goes while your body sleeps. She drapes her arm across me, holds me close. I don’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else. She feels like home. I say to her, “I don’t want you to go away.” “I won’t,” she says. “I’m right here, don’t be scared,” she says. Being there with her is everything I want, all I want, and I am scared, scared she’ll vanish if I simply breathe too hard, if I look away at just the wrong moment. She holds me closer, kisses me deeply. slow-like. I close my eyes, lean into her, get lost in the kiss, in her…

…and I wake up. Vivid dream to unwanted reality in a blink. My heart is trying to beat its way out of me, through muscle and bone and skin, like it wants to be free of me for once and all. I wake freezing, awash in cold sweat. The room is dark, quiet, lonely. She isn’t next to me. The room may as well be in some hotel, or a hospital, it doesn’t feel like home, and I don’t want to be there. The wheres really don’t matter, without her, the wheres feel the same. So much sameness.

Waking and loss, sunrise and pain, they hold no difference. Still, before the waking and loss, the sunrise and pain, at least she’s with me in my dreams, and that’s something. At least, it isn’t nothing.

So, in January I got to go see The Both (my brother’s birthday present to me), a band started by Aimee Mann and Ted Leo as a side-project to their solo work. It’s a good band, their self-titled debut record, The Both, is a great record. It’s a good mix of dark and light, you can hear Aimee and Ted’s individual styles, yet they blend so well. If you’re looking for something new, check out The Both, you won’t be let down.

They played lots of good stuff that cold January evening, but Aimee’s stuff will always be my favorite. Their joint rendition of Goodbye Caroline, off of Aimee’s fifth studio record, The Forgotten Arm, was SPECTACULAR.

First, I apologize. For MOST readers this will be a BORING post.

So, after some doing, I hit 500 wins with one of my HearthStone characters, Uther Lightbringer. He’s a Paladin, a Holy Warrior, defender the Light. Playing him is very chess-like, methodical. He’s my favorite, no two games are ever the same, but they’re never easy either, which I like.

500 Ranked Wins!

Now my character portrait’s all fancy, lined in gold, animated. I was stupidly excited to get it.

So, there’s this online card game, HearthStone, it’s based in the lore of Warcraft. All the cards are characters from the Warcraft universe, as are the Heroes. Basically, you use your cards to protect your Hero, while trying to ultimately kill the enemy Hero. It’s a game that’s brilliantly simple to learn, yet has astonishing depth. It quickly joined the ranks of eSports, games that people quite literally play professionally… for money. Lots of money. For example. November 2015 is the HearthStone World Championship, where players battle it out for $100,000, and a snazzy trophy. No, I didn’t accidentally add a few zeroes, the stakes are that high. There’s a live audience, and online viewers around the world. I’m aware, it’s crazy… and I’ve made it my goal to qualify.

Me winning a match:

It’s definitely a bold goal, deranged even, but it’s also totally possible. I’ll post videos as I rank higher… or I’ll just fail spectacularly and note that too.

She laid next to him, close and safe against his back, her arm across his chest in that comfortable way, that intimate way that makes him think of love and sex and peace and sleep. Before her, he didn’t truly know the feeling that’s slowly washing over him, contentment, something others come by so easily, so honestly. He could find contentment in other ways. Contentment by way of opiates gently passing through a needle, rushing into so many scarred veins, or behind a bar, for six bucks a glass of his favorite clear liquid, or between sweat soaked sheets, lost in some woman who isn’t her, but these things are just lies dressed up as contentment, just poor actors in a miserable off-broadway play. He’s done these things before, knows now that it’s all just a bunch of nothing that leads nowhere. He hadn’t met true contentment until he met her, until he looked into her eyes, eyes the color of sunlit autumn leaves. He saw in her eyes his present, his always. He knew he didn’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, ever. He feels that way right now, as she pulls him toward her, her chin gently pressing against his neck, two puzzle pieces locking into place. With a shudder of anticipation, he knows that they’ll fall asleep and in the morning they’ll take off each other’s clothes, he’ll fade into her, get lost in her body, her eyes. He feels like he knows his tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and it’s all so beautiful.

He doesn’t know that things have changed, that the world isn’t the same as it was just yesterday. He doesn’t see that this woman he loves more than the world has turned pale, doesn’t feel her heat against his back like he should, nor the rise and fall of her plain old terry cloth robe. He loves her so much in that robe, it’s nothing that’s supposed to be seductive, just cozy. She’s the sort of beautiful that just is, the sort of beautiful that makes terry cloth look as alluring as satin. She pulls him closer, wraps her leg around his waist. He doesn’t know that just as she snuggled against his back, a mutinous clot of blood lazily floated its way toward her heart. She pulls him closer, tightens her embrace. He smiles, thinks he knows what’s next.

Her lips brush his neck, gentle caressing growing rough with desire, with need. She won’t wait for morning. She’s going to take him tonight, right now. She’s never wanted him so badly, her entire body writhing, her loving embrace pinning him against their bed, a butterfly pinned to a cork board. She’s going to take him inside her, slowly, deeply, violently. She’s going to pull him into her more deeply than he’s ever experienced, bringing him past the point of choice. He feels teeth against his neck where once were lips and kisses. Teeth press through flesh, through muscle, scraping against bone. She’s bringing him to climax, wants him to fill her with liquid-fire, with life. She’s on her knees, straddling him, back arched, swallowing what she took of him, blood running down her face, over her bluing lips, into her cold mouth. She’s the picture of demented ecstasy, arterial blood spraying against her body. Still warm blood dripping from the ceiling, sticky cooling blood pasting curly strands of chestnut hair against her face.

Whatever pain that was screaming at him, telling him he was alive, is now but a whisper. He feels hot wetness blossoming around his head, running down his chest, yet he’s growing very cold, very sleepy. She’s laying next to him as she was, lapping up blood pooled behind his ear. He doesn’t know that similar scenes are spreading throughout the city, he doesn’t even know for certain what happened to him. He does know that all he’s ever really wanted, since their first date, a blind-date, seemingly a forever ago, was to fall asleep next to her until he quit breathing. He quit breathing not long after her unexpected kiss, all that’s left is to sleep.

He always thought his final breath, his final sleep, would separate them, but not so. The sleep he’s expecting won’t be quite final. Soon he’ll wake, and walk the night with her, his always. He’ll see the night sky at her side, he’ll learn a sort of contentment completely new to this new world.

So, TLC is possibly the most intellectually bankrupt network on tv. They have not one but TWO shows about dudes with multiple wives. There’s 19 Kids and Counting, a show about the Dugger family, Michelle & Jim-Bob, raising 19 kids. Aside from being boring to watch, the Duggers regularly use their “fame” to spearhead anti-gay and lesbian campaigns, including a state-wide robo-call against marriage equality in Arkansas. They have a late-night talk show, All About Sex, during which the hostesses seem to go on and on about how they mostly try to avoid sex with their spouses/lovers. Well, except Margaret Cho, she’s down for anything. All these shows have pseudo-intellectual catch phrases, “We just love each other,” “Love should be multiplied, not divided,” “…somehow, we just make things work,” “Dirty, filthy, fucking.” Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so intellectual, pseudo or otherwise, but the others are just things stupid people say to sound smart or profound, or to make their lives sound provocative. These are all pretty spectacular, in an awful sort of way. Dirty, filthy, fucking just might go on my epitaph. However, we might have a new top of the heap from one of TLC’s new reality train-wreck, My Big Fat Beautiful Life, it’s a show about this lady who’s overweight because of a medical condition. but loving life just the same. Now, anybody who puts their life on tv, or on a blog… is open to criticism, medical condition or no. Myself included. THAT SAID… This lady’s, sort of, life motto, just strikes me as totally vacuous, “I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count.”

I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count, it’s so… motivational speaker-esque. It’s just a bunch of words that add up to nothing. Yes, we only get one shot at life, so far as we know, that’s true enough. It’s the second half of her motivational gold that bothers me. See, every life counts, for good or ill, every life counts, no damn sure betters about it. We leave footprints in the world, it happens without even trying. Whether you’re Steve Jobs, or someone’s crazy cat-lady aunt, you’re remembered, you affect the people around you. Our worry should be that at the end of our everything, we left the world a little brighter than when we entered it, not whether or not we made life “count.”

So, it’s 2015, I’m thirty-four years, eleven days older. Yay. Am I supposed to feel wiser? If I am, I don’t. Mostly, I just feel… down… melancholy. كازنو 2015 has to be something good, not that it could just magically be something good. كيف تلعب القمار I have to endeavor to make it something good. I know I can… I can. I still have some fight in me, and when I don’t feel like fighting, that’s obviously when I have to fight harder.

I kind of just let 2014 happen to me, I can’t let 2015 go the same way. كيف تربح المال من الالعاب